Eric Harland

Believe it or not, jazz music and popular music were once the same thing. That must have been a great time to be alive. Of course, having to deal with all those dinosaurs roaming around the still-flat planet must have been a distinct drawback.

Those days are over, but jazz cats still draw from the pop music world for inspiration and, more specifically, melodies. The most famous example, perhaps, is John Coltrane taking the show tune “My Favorite Things” and turning it into a jazz standard.

These days, first-class jazzers such as Brad Mehldau and Dave Douglas are mining the songbooks of a whole new batch of pop musicians and coming up with gold. They’ve embraced the works of Rufus Wainwright, Radiohead, Roxy Music and, in particular, Bjork.Continue Reading →